Necessary Lies (37 page)

When Ursula talks, pointing to more faces in the pictures, Anna takes a sip of brandy, and then another one. It burns her throat but it warms her, too. She closes her eyes and thinks that she is tired. She has been chasing her ghosts, hoping for epiphanies. This has been an impossible mission; she has hoped for too much. “It's just round the corner,” her father used to coax her on their walks together when she was little and refused to go on. “A few more minutes. We are almost there.” That's how he kept her going. You can get a child go a long way on false hopes.

Anna closes her eyes and lets Ursula's voice float. The faces of hatred are all the same, she thinks. Thoughts pulsate in her head, feverish snitches of all the stories she has heard, Polish, German. Käthe's bruised face, her silence. Black spots on
Babcia
's lips. Ruins.

Her head swims. She has had too much to drink, and the room is circling around her head, sometimes taking off all together. Her eyes sting; Ursula's face and the photograph on the wall split into two separate selves, begin to swirl and rotate, before she wills them to become one again.

“Excuse me,” she says and staggers as she walks to the bathroom, trying to keep steady. Inside she washes her face and her eyes with cold water. The pink seashells on the tiles blur and swirl. Ursula's mother chose them, she recalls, and finds it all suddenly hilarious. But the hilarity passes as quickly as it comes. To steady herself, she leans against the cool tiles. The hot, sour lump in her stomach is rising up to her throat, and she begins to vomit, clutching the white toilet seat with her hands, until her stomach feels empty, wrung out from all that lay there. When it's over her throat feels burnt and sore, so she drinks some water from the tap the way she used to do it a long time ago, at school, her fingers interlocking, palms down, to make a trough.

“Are you all right?” she hears Ursula's voice.

“Fine,” Anna says. She is feeling better, much better. The
water tastes sweet.

“I'd better make us some coffee” Ursula says.

In the bathroom mirror Anna s eyes are reddened, her skin pale. With a cotton wad she puts on some of Ursula's makeup, a blusher on her cheeks, a dab of powder on her nose. She can hear the music, from behind the bathroom doors,
Tristan und Isolde
, the Furtwängler recording, one of William's favourites. He kept it right beside Beethoven's Fifth. “Auden was right. Wagner was an absolute shit,” he would say, finger in the air, “but this is all I care about.”

There is a residue in this memory of William. Of disappointment she has learned to stifle. A memory of disappointment. William's grant applications were routinely rejected. “Too abstract,” one of the reviewers wrote, “too derivative.”

When he stopped applying altogether, she said he was giving up too easily.

“I have all I want, Anna. What is there to fight for?”

“Recognition,” she said. “Respect.”

“It's so convoluted. It's politics and fashion. I'm tired of it.”

Excuses, she thought. But she didn't tell him that. She was there to heal him, not to scratch his wounds. How often did he tell her that he had enough of it from Marilyn. From her, he wanted peace.

“As if it mattered one bit,” he would also say. Why would anyone care if he ever wrote another damn note.

“I would.”

“Why?”

What could she say to that? That she wanted to see him happy? “I
am
happy,” he would say, raising his head over his musical boxes, all their metal parts dismantled, spread in neat rows on a linen tea towel, sanded pieces of wood slowly absorbing the stain. “I'm happy with you. I don't want anything else.”

“You must be hungry,” Ursula says. “It's getting late.” Her bare feet make soft, muted pats on the floor as she moves.

While Anna was in the bathroom, Ursula has warmed up slices of pita bread, and emptied containers from a Mediterranean restaurant — tahini dip, roasted red peppers in
oil, eggplant purée — into small ceramic bowls, with their shapes of fish, shells, and seahorses. Yellow, green, blue. The carrots, sliced thinly, are mixed with yoghurt, and Ursula adds a handful of fresh mint that she has chopped up and thrown into the bowl.

Ursula is right. Anna is hungry. She can feel it as soon as her teeth close on the warm slice of pita. The old feeling that Ursula's gaze can read right through her comes back, but it no longer frightens her or makes her uneasy. It may be the brandy or the strange, impossible configuration of fate that does it, the sheer improbability of the two of them sitting across each other at a table. Or it may be something deeper, like the slow but steady pace of a mountain hike that rewards her with a stupendous view of the valley she has already passed.

“Where did you meet William?” she asks Ursula.

Ursula hesitates for a moment, but only for a short moment. “Here, in Berlin, at a concert in the Conservatory,” she says quickly, as if speeding through the past could help. “In 1976, at the end of his sabbatical, when he was getting ready to go back home. I walked up to him, asked if I could take his picture. I thought he had an interesting face, something of a sulking child, hungry for attention, but at the same time disgusted with this hunger, above it. I told him that I've always been drawn to contradictions.

“'Go ahead,' he said. ‘Shoot!' Her lips twist when she talks about this moment that took place almost fifteen years ago. It still pleases her to remember William's amused consternation.

“The light was rotten and I knew it, but I still took a few shots. I'll have to repeat them, I said. But this will give me an idea, if I'm interested. I called him the next day to get him to come to the studio. I'm still interested, I said and he laughed. He said he was leaving the next day, that he really had no time. So we went out for a drink, instead, and I knew then that we wouldn't let each other alone that easily.”

“Why?” Anna asks.

“One of my black hunches,” Ursula laughs softly. “He wasn't an easy man to leave. It took him longer to know what was happening,” she continues. “He always wanted to believe he could be in charge, that things could be controlled, ordered
to stop or to go on. Ours was to be just a passing affair, his last night in Berlin, an unexpected treat. One of those nights when you talk and make love, and then talk some more, happy to be alive. A long night, but not without end.

“He called me two weeks later, from Montreal. He said he saw me everywhere, could not stop thinking about me. ‘You are right under my skin,' he said. ‘Are you still interested?' I said, ‘Yes.' He came back to Berlin a month later.”

Anna is listening. She is mesmerised by the soft timbre of Ursula's voice, the warmth of her laughter.

“We always quarrelled. We were too different, too stubborn, but maybe that's what kept us together. We made each other alive,” Ursula says.

“You didn't want to live with him!”

“We would've killed each other if we did. I'm not good at compromises. He wasn't, either. It was no use. We both knew it.”

The coffee maker is sputtering steam. Anna rises to pour coffee into their cups. She opens the fridge to find milk. Ursula is swinging on her stool, back and forth. She didn't like his latest music, she says, and William knew it. He knew she thought it too abstract, too detached. They were like that with each other. Honest, even if it hurt. He could count on her with criticism like that. “I wouldn't make a good wife,” she laughs.

How she still likes talking about him, Anna thinks. How he still excites her.

“How did Marilyn find out about you?”

“He told her. He said she was suspecting something anyway, and he didn't want to lie to her.”

“He didn't tell me,” Anna says.

“Is this really such a surprise?”

Anna takes a sip of coffee. It is so hot that it burns her tongue. No, it is not a surprise.

“Last time I saw William, it was in August,” Ursula says. “I took him to Berchtesgaden. I was still filming for the documentary. He kept telling me that I should move on, do other things. That there was no point in this constant blame, in dragging the ghosts out.”

In Ursula s story August is rainy and cold in the Alps. “There was a long line-up of cars on the wet, slippery road to Berchtesgaden. The last two kilometres took us twenty minutes,” Ursula continues. “We found a small hotel on the hill, with its stuffed grouse, little hats with flower wreaths around them, and painted boxes on the windowsill.
Gemütlich
, we laughed. We wouldn't have it any other way.

“I was there to photograph the ruins of Obersalzberg, with its maze of underground tunnels, the empty lots where once guards kept watch over the Berghof with its giant picture window. I wanted to go to
Kehlsteinhaus
, the Eagle's Nest, a present from Germany for Hitler's 50th birthday, his mountain retreat.

“That's where we drove in the morning, an eerie drive, past walls of old bunkers rotting in the damp air, half hidden under green moss. Past these small villages, churches with black steeples, cascades of red geraniums in all windows. The Alpine meadows. Cows roaming free, brass bells ringing wherever they go.

“By the Hotel Türken, where crowds used to gather for a glimpse of the Führer, there was a sign, “This is a private object. Photography forbidden.” I took the picture of the sign. In Obersalzberg we took a bus to
Kehlsteinhaus
, along a steep mountain road.
An engineering marvel, more than five thousand feet above sea level
, a taped voice described the origin of the house and the road,
completed in twelve months in the years 1937/38.
The bus stopped at the feet of the summit, and we took an elevator to the terrace of the Eagle's Nest. On the terrace of
Kehlsteinhaus
waiters offered us beer and tea.

“We hiked the steep loop trail of limestone rocks, caught a sight of the blue waters of Königssee, and the progress of a giant misty cloud, slowly coming our way. I took pictures of the tourists on the trail, the tables shaped like giant
HB Weissbier
bottles, a face of a hooded maiden watching us without a smile, the giant fireplace in the main hall.

“'There is nothing here for you,' William said, ‘Let's go.' He was getting impatient, edgy. Fanned his face and frowned. This was an old quarrel over what
should be remembered and what should be forgotten. When we got down to the terrace, we found out that we couldn't leave right away. We had to wait for the bus we were registered for. There were too many visitors, the driver explained, they had to keep order.

“'He
is
right,' William said, before I had the time to say anything.

“In Berchtesgaden it was raining again, and there were no mountains to be seen, but we decided to go for a walk. On the way we passed a small cemetery. Climbed the low steps and walked by the ivy-covered graves, by long rows of names underneath pale oval photographs with smiling, hopeful faces.
Gefallen 7.7. 1944 bei Stalino, 1943 bei Kursk, im Osten.
I'm just checking the collective pulse, I told him. Someone has to watch all the time.

“William said,
'Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same thing.
St. Paul said that to the Romans. An old priest from around here told me that once.'

'The Church has its own sins to mind,' I snapped. ‘They were not exactly without blame.' I hated when he took on a tone like that.

“The rain had stopped and we could see a giant rainbow over the mountains, touching the Eagle's Nest. Eerie, I thought. The shops in Berchtesgaden were closed, but we peeked inside, at the felt hats, the full Bavarian skirts, puffed sleeves, embroidered woollen vests. That's what I want, I said, pointing at a dark green hat with a feather. And you will wear this one, I pointed hat with a
Gamsbart
, a sign of a hunter.

“There was a small
Biergarten
where we took a seat on the wooden chairs under a tree and ordered beer. William was playing with the beer coaster, spinning it on the side. An old man with flaming red cheeks, a few yellowed teeth, a crew cut of grey hair walked in and sat down at an empty table. ‘
Grüss Gott,'
he chatted us up.

“‘Grüss Gott,'
I said. Asked him about hunting, the weather. I made William buy us a round of beer. I listened to the band, nodded my head in the rhythm of the music.

“‘My name is Kurt Macht,' the man said.

“‘Ursula Herrlich,' I said. ‘My friend from Breslau,' I introduced William. He was staring at the plastic tablecloth, at a swarm of red ladybugs on a white background.

“Herr Macht took a deep breath. ‘Ah! Breslau! Such a beautiful city. It's all lost, now. Damn Commies.' He leaned forward, ‘But nobody is blaming them!'

“The
Schnapps
woman passed by with a small wooden barrel hanging over her neck. She poured the yellow
Schnapps
into a tin decanter and offered it to William who drank it all in one gulp. She wiped the decanter with a linen cloth and poured another drink for Herr Macht.

“‘You don't believe a word they say do you? You are too young to remember. Wasn't the way they tell you it was,' Herr Macht went on. ‘There would be a different song, if we had won.' He nodded his head, staring into the distance.

“‘There is too much dirt on this earth, son. Someone has to clean it up.'

“This is when William turned to me and said that he was leaving. He said it in English.

That did it. Herr Macht, red faced, filled with beer, stood up, shaking on his legs. He stared at William, chewing his words, picking them up carefully. ‘Traitors like you should be shot,' he said at last, and then he spit. The blob of spit landed at William's feet. ‘Put against the wall and shot.'